The Breakfast Club, Artillery Lane, Spitalfields

The Breakfast Club, Sunny Side Up.

There are parts of London where I always get lost. Even though I’ve lived here for most of my adult life I STILL can’t find my way round the City. Especially coming out of Liverpool Street Station. Depending on how you arrive at the station, there seem to be a bizarre number of exits. And there are always roadworks. So, I was running just a little bit late, exited the tube somewhere I really couldn’t remember at all and got completely lost. Eventually I found what should have been a really simple place to reach – about 2 minutes from the station and pushed open the door to The Breakfast Club in Spitalfields.

You know when you go through the door and can’t stop grinning that it’s going to be a good experience. And, that’s the effect that walking into the Breakfast Club had on me. It’s like some kind of early morning Toy Story nightmare. There are things to spot everywhere and it’s scruffy in a comfortably, stay for the rest of the day kind of way.

I ordered a Breakfast Club Mojito. It seemed appropriate and I could pretend it was healthy and just fresh fruit and grapefruit juice (though there was quite a lot of rum and tequila in there too I think). On the menu a mixture of American diner classics, Greasy Spoon stalwarts and the odd bit of Tex Mex thrown in for a bit of spice. I chose a hot pastrami sandwich while my dining companion had a classic Eggs Benedict.

Food arrived quickly and with a smile. You get the impression that the people working there KNOW their product is good and enjoy showing people how it should be done. My Hot Pastrami sandwich was everything I’d hope for in a club sandwich – full of filling, tasty pastrami, piquant cheese and a mustardy kick. Very yum indeed. Fries on the side were obviously home made and fresh. My companion’s Eggs Benedict almost made me want to like eggs…beautifully runny yolks spilling out under a blanket of hollandaise. Portion sizes are generous – almost American but not quite and prices are reasonable.

But, while it would be wrong to undervalue the food, this is somewhere you go to (and go back to) because of the place. Although you know it’s constructed to be cool…well somehow it still is. My dining companion muttered that we were at least 20 years older than the average…and yet, it didn’t matter. And silly detail like ‘my little pony’ wallpaper on the walls of the female loo, the framed roman centurian draped with a union jack as you walk in and the newspaper clipping about the broken clock COULD so easily be naff…

We went on a midweek lunchtime. It was busy but not ridiculously so. Our waitress told us that at weekends there can be long queues…not surprisingly in my view.

The Breakfast Club
12-16 Artillery Lane, Spitalfields, London E1 7LS (there are other branches)